


Wanted: Mom Friend

by singingwithoutwords



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Borderline crack, Gen, basically a giant excuse to write about my many alien babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 01:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwithoutwords/pseuds/singingwithoutwords
Summary: The crew of theStarlit Spearjust want their human to not accidentally kill himself.  Is that really so much to ask?[square S4 - au: sci-fi/futuristic]





	Wanted: Mom Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by [this tumblr post](http://singingwithoutwords.tumblr.com/post/163239347758/mom-friend).

It was a solemn group that gathered in the lower conference room aboard the survey vessel _Starlit Spear_ .  Four of the five species that currently made up the _Spear_ ’s crew were present, including the Captain.  The fifth species was not represented, because their crew contained only one human, and that human was in the infirmary.

Again.

Captain Viridae sighed, perching on the edge of her seat.  She was the oldest and second-smallest member of the crew, but universally respected and widely feared.  She had the child-like look of all Telvans, but every part of her from her furry ears to her tail bore at least a few scars.  She may have retired from service with the Unified Galactic Navy, but her fearsome reputation had followed her into the private sector, and no being of any species wanted to be on her bad side.  Even Igganik, easily three times her mass, waited until she sat to sit themself.

“How is he?” Viridae asked.

“Moderately wounded,” the ship’s senior physician Zzef reported, clacking his mandibles in a sigh of his own.  “Not as badly as last time, but the comfort that offers is little. At least he is not concussed in this round.”

Viridae nodded.  “I don’t think I speak only for myself when I say this has to stop,” she said, and heads around the table bobbed in agreement.  “I’m afraid I’m out of ideas, gentlebeings, so: any suggestions?”

Igganik raised a hand to their face, smoothing their whiskers.  “Spoke with a nestmate,” they said slowly. Na’tyunn found Standard trying, not liking a language which didn’t have a word for ‘ _the particular annoyance of having a song you only know part of stuck in your head_ ’.  “Had human like ours. Reckless. Often harmed. No longer. Know of ‘mom friend’?”

Zzef tilted his head thoughtfully.  “I know this label,” he said. “It is a human who corrals other humans, but they do not dislike and resent when it is done, correct?”

Viridae’s ears perked forward in interest.  “How do we obtain a mom friend?” she asked with dignified eagerness.

The fourth attendant of the meeting and smallest member of the crew chittered from her seat (on the table rather than at it, since Corvitans at their tallest fell well short of a full meter).  Her datapad beeped, collecting her vocalizations and the input from her uplink and translating them into something coherent to beings not connected to the Corvitan hivemind.

“Mom Friend cannot be requested,” the translator said in the prim voice Kira had delightedly chosen when she joined the crew.  “Mom Friend hides in humans. You cannot see from outside, only come to know in time. He wakes.”

“Thank you, Kira,” Zzef said, standing.  “I will go and ensure he does not destroy the infirmary in his boredom.”

Viridae nodded.  “We'll look into this ‘mom friend’ idea.  Hopefully we find one soon. Tell him I’ll visit later if he stays in bed like a good boy.”

Zzef hissed in amusement and nodded, taking his leave.

* * *

Tony had been awake for approximately five minutes before he started planning his daring escape.  It was going to be harder than normal to pull it off this time, because Corvitans were adorable overgrown cat/bat hybrids with the sapience to use that against him.  There were three Corvitans on the _Spear_ ’s crew, and two of them were lying on top of him pretending to sleep, secure in the knowledge that Tony would never jostle or move them even though he _knew_ they were faking.

While Tony was contemplating poking at least Vani, who would see the humor in it, the door to the infirmary opened and the head doc folded himself in.

“I see Vani and Leka have trapped you,” Zzef noted.  He was a seven-foot bug with a surprisingly expressive voice once you knew what to listen for, and to Tony he sounded on the verge of laughing himself silly.

“This is a conspiracy and you’re in on it,” Tony accused.  “I have work to do.”

“And where will you work, when your workspace is inaccessible until it is deemed safe?” Zzef asked brightly, antennae waving in silent laughter.

“I’m not letting you have any of my blueberries for at least a week,” Tony huffed, even though they both knew he would never.  Iricharr digestive systems were essentially garbage disposals and Zzef was a nice guy, so he always wound up eating the especially tasteless junk in the food supply that no one else liked, and all it would take was one longing look before Tony handed over the whole bag of blueberries.

“The Captain has promised to visit if you remain where you should be,” Zzef informed him.

Tony considered that for a moment before declaring, “I still think it’s a conspiracy and I still think you’re in on it, but I forgive you, anyway.”

“Your generosity is appreciated,” Zzef assured him.  “As are your blueberries.”

Tony laughed - it hurt, but not enough to indicate broken ribs, at least - and settled back down.  He could behave.

For now.

* * *

The first human the _Spear_ accepted was Steve, who taught them many things about humans and the way they used words.

Steve had been highly recommended by his last posting.  His former supervisor had used many words to describe him, like ‘courageous’ and ‘honorable’ and ‘proactive’.

Courageous, it turned out, was a human codeword that meant ‘completely lacking in both self-preservation and common sense’.  Steve was even worse than Tony, who was content to endanger himself in his workspace; Steve endangered himself everywhere, at all times, in very creative ways that boggled the minds of beings who didn’t see the entertainment value in near-death experiences.

Honorable was also a codeword.  This one meant ‘cannot abide unfairness or abuse and will punch literally anyone or anything he feels is indulging in either’.  There had been one moment when a solar flare had destroyed a prototype probe Tony had been testing, and every last nonhuman on the ship was firmly convinced that Steve was going to try and fight a star.

Proactive, continuing the trend, meant ‘has never once encountered battle tactics and may be allergic to planning ahead’.  This, combined with the true meanings of honorable and courageous, meant Steve had easily twice as many brushes with death as Tony.

Some of the crew halfheartedly suggested letting Steve go, but Tony had already bonded with him, and no one wanted to deal with Tony’s sad eyes, so Steve stayed.

* * *

It was probably collective Steve-induced madness that made them bring Clint onboard.  Clint had no recommendations, no higher education, no special training. He listed his qualifications as “I’ve got amazing arms and I shoot good”.  When asked later, Viridae would sigh and admit that she’d panicked and picked someone as far from Steve’s glowing resume as she could find.

Clint, according to Tony, had not lied about his arms.  He had undersold his shooting capabilities; he was invaluable when surveying planets with potentially hostile wildlife, and always seemed to find a way to get free drinks off his inhuman eyesight and unerring aim.

He had that same worrying ‘courage’ thing, though, on par with Steve.  He also got into fights he couldn’t possibly win and indulged in dangerous stunts for no reason other than boredom, and seemed to view all flora as ‘edible until proven poisonous’.  Zzef took to carrying a special kit around just for Clint, because he was also staying.

* * *

They tried to be more cautious with Natasha.  They checked her thoroughly, seeking out coworkers to find out more about her behavior.  They already had three reckless humans, they did not need another. Her coworkers used words like ‘calm’ and ‘no-nonsense’ and ‘level-headed’, and not even Kira could see how those words might be misleading.

So Natasha joined their crew, and she was everything her coworkers had said she was.

On duty.

Off duty, she indulged in the same stunts as Clint, sparred with Steve, and laughed with delight whenever Tony offered her new gear or made things explode (as long as no one was badly hurt).  She hid knives in the strangest places and saw locked doors as a personal offense that had to be corrected. After a month, no one could recall ever having seen her sleep, but everyone remembered the unscheduled spacewalk she’d taken to grab a chunk of ore Tony had expressed interest in.

Most of the crew threw their appendages up in despair and gave up at that point.  They could take no more reckless humans. Four was too many as it was.  They should have contented themselves with Tony.

It wasn’t until Tony brought Bruce onto the crew that they realized what had happened under their metaphorical noses.

* * *

“This is Bruce.  He’s my new science bro.  Can I keep him?” Tony asked, all but bouncing in place with excitement, and Viridae was helpless to say anything but ‘yes’.  Tony cheered, promptly dragging Bruce off to his workspace.

Bruce stayed mainly to the workspaces and labs, where he proved just as reckless as the others.  But he was under near-constant surveillance there, which made it easier to notice.

“Brucie bear, it’s only science if you write it down, and you can’t write it down if you’re dead.”

“We have simulators for a reason, honey, and human experimentation is still illegal even if you’re the human you’re experimenting on.”

“I haven’t eaten in fourteen hours and I’m not leaving this lab until you do.  Do you want me to starve to death, Dr. Banner?”

They started paying more attention to how Tony interacted with the other reckless humans they’d acquired on their quest to find him a mom friend after that, and were surprised by what they found.

“I know it’s bright and pretty, Birdbrain, that’s nature’s way of making sure you don’t eat it.”

“Steven darling, I love you deeply, which is why I’m saving you from a bloody death so I can teach you all about the phrase ‘look before you leap’.”

“Natasha dear, please go to bed, you can’t scare the newbies properly like this.”

“This is called a parachute, Steve, it’s to keep you alive when you jump off very tall things, please use it.”

“I swear to the Void, Clint, if you so much as _think_ of pranking the Coralan ambassador, I will confiscate your bow and arrow set.”

“Nat, my love, my goddess, my muse, we all know you’d win this fight, but it would also ruin your outfit, and you don’t want that, do you?”

Somehow, in trying to find Tony a mom friend, he had become the mom friend.  The mom friend had been inside him all along, just like Kira said.

Everyone wholeheartedly agreed: humans were weird.


End file.
